13 photographs › At a glance
- Jan
- Feb
- Mar
- Apr
- May
- Jun, shaded
- Jul, shaded
- Aug, shaded
- Sep, shaded
- Oct, shaded
- Nov
- Dec
Cultivation
Grouped as an orchid, listed under the genus Stelis in the archetype table, and Kew describes it as “epiphyte”.
Seasons
The rain rule reads a summer growing season: 70% of the median year's rain (1,608 mm of 2,171 mm) falls in June to October, warmer than the year (wet-season mean 20.7 °C against a yearly mean of 19.8 °C). Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: December to April.
Rain
2,171 mm in the median year at the habitat, 1,608 mm of it June to October. Wettest month September at 388 mm, driest month March at 51 mm. Across the grid cells of the range the year's total runs 1,544 mm to 3,259 mm, the 10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year. The median of the cells' own yearly totals, 2,142 mm, is the year's rain at the top of the page; the 2,171 mm here is the median year's, the twelve monthly medians added, which the rain rule reads. Habitat calendar, northern hemisphere; median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA.
Light
Open sky over the habitat: 25 to 41 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 22, the highest 90th-percentile month 43).
Warmth and air
Monthly means: the coldest month's mean nightly low 12.8 °C in January (across the grid cells of the range 9.0 °C to 15.9 °C), the warmest month's mean daily high 26.5 °C in April (median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA). Cold floor: none read. The nearest figure is 12.8 °C, the coldest month's mean nightly low, January, in the median year (CHELSA); a month's mean of its nightly lows is warmer than the nights a floor is read from. The daily extremes were read at a weather cell whose ground is too far above or below the typical spot to correct for, and are not used.
Relative humidity at the habitat: 62 to 71% across the year (monthly means, median year across the grid cells of the range, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.
How this section is made
Each card states this species' habitat figures with their sources, and what two fixed rules read from them; nothing here says what the plant does, wants or tolerates. The rules · the terms.
Seasons. Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the grid cells of the range: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve moves 4 °C or more and the habitat lies 10° or more from the equator. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.
Rain. CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the grid cells of the range. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.
Light. CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.
Temperature. CHELSA monthly means, median year across the grid cells of the range. No cold floor is read without a daily extremes series; the coldest month's mean nightly low named in its sentence is not one. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.
Humidity. CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the grid cells of the range.
Group. Listed under the genus Stelis in the archetype table, and Kew describes it as “epiphyte”. A group is taken only where Kew's description of the species agrees with the table's listing. The table gives no figure and no prose; the cold floor is the habitat's alone.
Climate across the habitat
Habitat months, northern hemisphere
Mean daily high from 21 °C in Jan and Dec to 27 °C in Apr; mean nightly low from 13 °C in Jan, Feb and Dec to 17 °C in May, Jun, Jul, Aug and Sep. The cold quarter, Dec to Feb, is the three months around the coldest month's mean nightly low, centred on the 3 months in a row that tie for it. 2,171 mm of rain in the median year (the twelve monthly medians added), the wettest month Sep. The bands show the 10th to 90th percentile across 54 habitat cells. Beneath: daily light integral and relative humidity through the year, each on its own scale.
Figures by month
| Figure | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day °C | 21 / 17–25 | 23 / 19–26 | 25 / 21–27 | 27 / 23–28 | 26 / 23–29 | 25 / 21–27 | 25 / 20–26 | 25 / 21–26 | 24 / 20–26 | 23 / 19–25 | 22 / 18–25 | 21 / 18–24 |
| Night °C | 13 / 9–16 | 13 / 10–16 | 14 / 10–17 | 15 / 12–19 | 17 / 13–21 | 17 / 14–21 | 17 / 13–20 | 17 / 13–20 | 17 / 13–20 | 16 / 13–19 | 14 / 11–17 | 13 / 10–17 |
| Rain mm | 67 / 10–132 | 57 / 10–98 | 51 / 15–74 | 70 / 33–110 | 139 / 101–215 | 346 / 228–445 | 330 / 200–515 | 320 / 218–516 | 388 / 250–599 | 224 / 163–448 | 110 / 50–274 | 69 / 18–202 |
| DLI | 27 / 23–33 | 31 / 28–38 | 38 / 35–42 | 41 / 39–43 | 40 / 36–42 | 34 / 30–37 | 35 / 32–40 | 35 / 32–39 | 31 / 27–33 | 30 / 26–32 | 27 / 24–32 | 25 / 22–32 |
| RH % | 68 / 58–71 | 66 / 57–68 | 62 / 56–66 | 62 / 59–65 | 65 / 62–67 | 69 / 66–71 | 68 / 63–73 | 69 / 64–73 | 71 / 67–74 | 69 / 66–74 | 68 / 62–72 | 69 / 59–72 |
The daily extremes were not used: the correction for elevation, +1022 m, is beyond the 1,000 m either way that a lapse rate is applied over, so the weather cell's ground is other terrain than the typical spot's. So no cold floor is read for this species, and the coldest month's mean nightly low is not taken as one. What that cell gave, so corrected, over 44 years: absolute minimum 9.2 °C, 1st-percentile night 12.5 °C.
How this section is made
Natural habitat
How this section is made
Photographs
Photographs: (c) Peter Quakenbush, some rights reserved (CC BY) (4); (c) Victor De la Cruz, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2).
Related
Similar habitat climate The 6 nearest by mean daily high, mean nightly low and rain, month by month. How.
Isochilus latibracteatus Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Peter Quakenbush
Epidendrum polyanthum Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Daniel Acosta
Saurauia scabrida Actinidiaceae Photo: CC BY, Neptalí Ramírez Marcial
Gongora galeata Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Victor De la Cruz
Masdevallia floribunda Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Victor De la Cruz
Selaginella stellata Starry spikemoss Photo: CC0, author not statedOther Stelis 28 in the reference
Stelis adrianae Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Frank Dietze Stelis alba Orchidaceae 
Stelis argentata Silvery Leach Orchid Photo: CC BY, Josh Noseworthy Stelis aurea Golden Stelis 
Stelis ciliaris Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Juan Cruzado Cortés
Stelis emarginata Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Neptalí Ramírez Marcial
Stelis eublepharis Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Thibaud Aronson
Stelis galeata Helmeted Leach Orchid Photo: CC BY, Juan Carlos Caicedo Hernández
Stelis gelida Flor de Llanten Photo: CC BY-SA, Jeanette Clarke
Stelis hirtzii Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY, Nolan Exe
Stelis immersa Sunken Pleurothallis Photo: CC BY, Luc Wyn
Stelis kefersteiniana Orchidaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Orchi all 29 ›Names & registers
Also known as Stelis alfaroi; Stelis bourgeaui; Stelis bourgeavii; Stelis carioi; Stelis curvata and 3 more. (GBIF Backbone)
Kew accepts as species of their own Stelis chiapensis; Stelis sotoana: older names in GBIF's record of this species that Kew's World Checklist accepts as other species. (WCVP, RBG Kew, file of 2026-06-04)
The record
Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →
Where this page came from built 2026-10-22
gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21; 1 record within 1 km of a botanic garden, herbarium or zoo left out (1 at a botanic garden or arboretum; Wikidata's list)climate answeredasked 2026-10-22climate.extremes answeredasked 2026-10-22NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 15.50_-93.125, lapse-corrected +1022 m at 6.5 °C/km; read, and set aside: the correction for elevation, +1022 m, is beyond the 1,000 m either way that a lapse rate is applied over, so the weather cell's ground is other terrain than the typical spot's, so no cold floor is shownwikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22wikipedia nothing to reportasked 2026-10-22inat.photos.wild answeredasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22inat.photos.cultivated not askedgbif.media answeredasked 2026-10-22openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshotEvery source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 26 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.